Jail sentence for Austrian ex-MEP caught in sting

(VIENNA) - An Austrian former member of the European
Parliament was sentenced Monday to four years in prison for corruption
after being secretly filmed offering to change EU legislation for money.

Ernst
Strasser, who is also a former Austrian interior minister, was recorded
in 2010 by undercover British reporters saying he charged 100,000 euros
($134,000) per year for his lobbying services.

Presiding judge
Georg Olschak said he did not believe Strasser's line of defence that he
had thought the journalists, who were posing as employees of a fake
firm, were secret agents whom Strasser had wanted to expose.

"That
is probably one of the most outlandish things I have heard in my
20-year career," Olschak told a packed Vienna courtroom. "You won't find
a single court in Austria to believe that argument."

The judge
said it had been established "without a doubt" that Strasser took the
journalists to be lobbyists and had asked for "100,000 euros per year in
return for influencing the legislative process in the European
Parliament."

Strasser, 56, who resigned as a European MP in 2011,
sat stony-faced as the verdict -- for four years without the possibility
of parole -- was delivered. His lawyer Thomas Kralik said he would
appeal.

Sunday Times journalists Claire Newell and Jonathan
Calvert secretly filmed a string of meetings with Strasser, tapes of
which were made available to the Vienna court and were also handed to
the European Parliament.

Strasser from the start "described
himself as a lobbyist" and "said he charged clients 70,000 euros and ...
in November (2010) changed this to 100,000 euros," Calvert testified by
video link from London on Monday.

One of the meetings took place
in a fake London office for their "pretend lobbying firm" Bergman and
Lynch, staffed by other Sunday Times journalists "to make it look busy",
Newell told the court, also via video link.

"It is a breach of
European Parliament rules to charge money to change legislation. We felt
we had enough material to expose that," Newell said.

The two
reporters said they asked Strasser to alter EU directives that were
being drawn up on waste management and on financial services.

Calvert
said Strasser told them that he had been too late to change the waste
legislation but that for the latter "he had achieved a better result
than we had asked for."

The undercover operation aimed at exposing
corruption in Brussels also ensnared three other MEPs: Romania's Adrian
Severin, Slovenia's Zoran Thaler and Pablo Zalba from Spain.

"Of
course I am a lobbyist," one of the videos shows Strasser saying, adding
that combining such activities with being an MEP "works very well."

He
added: "But the fee, my clients pay me for a year 100,000 euros, yes. I
now have five, hopefully from tomorrow six clients ... You will be the
seventh."

"In the history of the Austrian Second Republic there
are few people who have damaged the standing of the Republic as much as
you," the judge said.

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